Bob Mansfield Stayed At Apple Because Scott Forstall Was Forced Out

The reason Apple's top hardware engineer Bob Mansfield decided to stay at the company is pretty simple. John Paczkowski of All Things D reports Mansfield stuck around because Scott Forstall, formerly head of iOS, was forced out.

Mansfield announced plans to retire from Apple in June. Then in August, Mansfield unexpectedly announced he wasn't ready to leave Apple just yet. He was going to stick around as an advisor to Tim Cook. On Monday, he stopped being an advisor, and got an entirely new division to run, called Technologies.

So what happened between June and October? First, Apple's hardware engineers told Cook that Mansfield's replacement Dan Riccio wasn't up to the task of leading hardware engineering. He "nearly witnessed an insurrection" when Mansfield announced retirement plans.